Leading Russian banks – Sberbank and Alfa Bank – are piloting digital currency portfolios for their private clients, CoinDesk reported referring to a report from local news source Kommersant.
The pilot will be conducted within the “regulatory sandbox” of the Bank of Russia. It will see the banks offering their clients shares in a special fund that will be trading six cryptocurrencies on major exchanges, including Kraken and Bitstamp.
"We'd like to offer our clients an absolutely transparent way to invest in digital assets with a full compliance with regulations that will let them invest in the product they are interested in Russia,” Sberbank Private Banking deputy chair Ana Ivanchuk said (as translated by CoinDesk).
"Our goal is to speed-up the recognition of the digital assets as legitimate financial assets as soon as possible," said Anton Rakhmanov, manager of Alfa Bank's private banking branch.
The portfolio will include leading cryptocurrencies including bitcoin (BTC), bitcoin cash (BCH), ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC). The combinations of the cryptos included in portfolio will be revised once a quarter and their proportions balanced using a trading algorithm. The pilot process is expected to take around 45 days.
Sberbank and Alfa Bank’s crypto plans will be supported by the AddCapital investment fund, the National Settlement Depository and Group IB. AddCapital will be responsible for the technical solution of the project, while the National Settlement Depository will act as the custodian.
